Quick Now, Here, Now, Always

A Sermon Preached at the Cathedral Church of St. Mark on the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost, 2022 by the Very Rev. Tyler Doherty, Dean and Rector.

Through the wonders of zoom, I was chatting the other day  with my priest friend Mary about Dame Julian of Norwich (patron saint of our very own Josie Stone’s hometown) whose words form those famous lines from Eliot’s Four Quartets– 

Quick now, here, now, always–

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less that everything)

All shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read that… a couple hundred perhaps? And yet, I heard that line–”Quick now, here, now, always” as if for the first time. Eliot points us to a way of seeing and navigating the world, this strange thing we call being human, that is always available–in the enlivened quickening of this very Christ-saturated moment, here, now–if we have eyes to see, ears to hear, and hearts whose gates are open.

But, honestly, we often don’t. At least, I don’t. With Jeremiah who raises his mournful cry from exile, there’s a sense that “this isn’t it,” of being separated from the effervescent life of God present and active here and now regardless of circumstance. Those lines of Lamentations rising out of the destruction of Jerusalem from last week become our song, the story we live by–“How lonely sits the city that once was full of people. How like a widow she has become…” Loneliness, grief, mourning, separation and exile seem to be our daily bread. But is it true?

A shift occurs, I think, when we take our stand in and as that “condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything).” “All shall be well,” has admittedly become a kind of lipstick-on-a-pig panacea bumper-sticker for phony optimism. “All shall be well,” can too easily shade into stiff upper lip dissociative stoicism in the face of difficulty. The condition of complete simplicity costing not less than everything is the necessary precondition for any authentic pronouncement that, “All shall be [is] well.” It starts with seeing clearly how our stories about how things “should” be, the requirements and demands we place on ourselves, others, the world as it is, conflict with the world as it actually is. Complete simplicity costing not less than everything gestures towards a child-like receptivity and curiosity about this very moment as it is, rather than leaning back, and judging it from the place of fear, scarcity, and lack. What’s here when we drop the story? What’s here if I simply, completely simply, enter gently in?

It turns out that a lot of our sense of exile is self-created. I hold to some idea that my life should be a certain way, and I’m suddenly at odds with how it is in reality. I grumble, complain, and launch into lamentation and make myself and others miserable in the process. Caught up in shoulds, requirements, and demands we miss the moment, which happens to be the only place we encounter the Living God. This is what Jeremiah is getting at this week. The Israelites have experienced traumatic expulsion from their homeland. Jerusalem is in ruins. They are living under the thumb (once again) of a foreign power. Not good. But what is God’s charge, through Jeremiah, to the exiled Israel? “Same as it ever was/Same as it ever was,” to quote David Byrne of the Talking Heads. God is no less available to God’s people in one place or another, in one situation or another, in one emotional state or another. Behold the Lamb of God! Our passover leading us out of exile always right under our noses.

Jeremiah reminds the folks under Babylonian captivity that regardless of geographical location, or who’s in power, or the weather (internal or external) the same God who was and is and is to come is present, active, and working. Build houses! Plant gardens! Multiply! Be fruitful and seek the welfare of others in the city, for it is in caring for the widow, the stranger, the orphan, the alien in the land that a bedrock fruitfulness beyond boom and bust, going out or coming in, starts to burble up like, “water flowing underground.” Rooted and grounded in God in Christ through the Holy Spirit–who turns the sea into dry land, who makes a way where our slipping feet can’t seem to find purchase–we find ourselves brought, carried, “into a place of refreshment” in the least likely of circumstances. Even in our exile, that condition of complete simplicity opens our eyes, opens the door of our heart, to fruitfulness and provision. We wake to the indestructible and “quick now, here, now, always” reality of being welcomed home to a place on the bosom of Abraham we never left. And praiseful joy is the only logical response to such a gift– “Be joyful in God, all you lands… How awesome are your deeds.” Even here? Like this? Yes, here. Yes, just as you are. Exiled and at home. How wonderful indeed. 

The ten lepers, likewise, are in exile. They are between Samaria and Galilee in an all too familiar “not in my backyard” maneuver where the clean, the prim, and the proper, cast aside those unclean, undesired others to the other side of the Trax. Out of sight, out of mind. And the lepers have internalized this identity to such an extent that even when they see Jesus passing through they keep their distance. They cry out for mercy and on the way to show themselves to the priests they are made clean. The exiles are no longer cast off, excluded, bearers of contagion defined only by their illness. They are made clean. But are they home? They are healed, but are they whole? That’s my question. 

Only the one turns back, praises God in a loud voice, throws himself at Jesus’ feet and thanks him. Only the one, I would say is made whole. The others are healed, but their disease, their exclusion, their poverty is now to them a bad dream. A blip on the radar. Let us never speak of this again. They’ve changed camps from unclean to clean, but they’ve missed most wondrous thing of all about this God ours–no matter who we are, where we are, how we are, we are beloved children of God created in God’s image and likeness. Fr. Robert Capon’s joke about one of the other nine healed lepers is that he can be overheard in conversation–“Say, fella, weren’t you a leper a while back?” “Who, me? A leper? You must be kidding, buddy. I’m a pants presser.” Only the one leper who turns back actually knows himself as accepted, loved, welcomed to the banquet table of divine love spread in the hostile wilderness between Samaria and Galilee just as he is. Accepted in his unacceptableness like the Prodigal Son wrapped in his father’s running out while-he-was-yet-far-off arms before he’s changed his ways, or rattled off his well-rehearsed apology.

The love of God takes us as we are, not how we think God thinks we should be and loves us into loving. This is the truly integrated life where our faults and foibles–the things we think need to be gotten rid off in order for us to be loveable–are held in the loving palm of God and healed. There are no perfect people. There are only forgiven sinners. Capon’s point about the one who turns back is this– “At Jesus’ feet he sees himself whole: dead and risen, and outcast and accepted, a leper and cleansed… We don’t have to leave behind a scrap! Nothing, not even the worst thing we ever did will be anything but a glorious scar.” Turning to Jesus, praising him, prostrating at his feet and giving thanks, this one leper knows what the others do not: the freedom, peace, contentment, and joy that springs forth from “accepting the fact that you are accepted, despite the fact that you are unacceptable,” as Paul Tillich tells us. The other nine lepers only know that they are accepted because they are now acceptable. And even if our friend toes the line as the world’s best pants presser, the day will come when his creases aren’t quite right on his best paying customer’s khakis and he will be deemed unacceptable once again. He’ll be in exile tormented by that one careless pass of the iron, forever defined (in his own mind) by a moment’s inattention.

If you push the logic of healing versus wholeness to its most extreme you might even say that at Jesus’ feet whether we’re clean or unclean, at home or in exile, whether we live or whether we die, is of no ultimate, finally-determining significance. We all know plenty of healed people who aren’t whole. And I’ve met sick people who will never get better who are whole, who are renewed inwardly each day. For us to really hear this gospel as gospel, we have to enter into that place at Jesus’ feet where the Leper still has leprosy, still lives in hinterlands between Samaria and Galilee, and is simultaneously made clean, sitting by the fire with a whiskey and the newspaper, faithful dog asleep on the rug.

Being at Jesus’ feet, pouring ourselves just as we are out on him and receiving his poured out like a libation love, is that condition of complete simplicity Eliot speaks of in Four Quartets. We drop the tired tape-loop commentaries, the stories, the requirements, the demands, and open-handed, little, poor, surrendered, receive the tinctured waters of God’s steadfast, faithful love for us just as we are. Accepted in our well-evident unacceptableness we see that indeed, “The word of God is not chained!” The place of refreshment is determined not by circumstances–which blow this way and that–but our availability to God’s saving grace. “Let your door stand open to receive Christ,” says Ambrose, “unlock your soul to him, offer him a welcome… and then you will see the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, and the joy of grace.” Quick now, here, now, always. At Jesus’ feet, completely simple, empty-handed, “the fire and the rose are one.” Completely simple, empty-handed at Jesus’ feet, are you in exile or at home? Sick or well? Who can say? At Jesus’ feet we say with Dame Julian, “All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” Just love.